Sport and Feminism collide....this time in Rugby

This is not an unusual occurrence. Most organised sport is male dominated both in participants and the decision-makers. They don't tend to have women's best interests at heart although they throw the odd carrot in our direction. So my feminist hackles rise quite regularly. However this latest revelation of nincompoopery* within Rugby really does merit analysis. And although this post is a bit after the fact, it is a really good example of male privilege in action and an unawareness of said privilege.

I recently started following @WRUWomenSupport on Twitter (Welsh Rugby Union Women's Support). From their tweets it became apparent the the Welsh Rugby Union were about to make a decision to the detriment of their Women's national team. They were proposing to remove the women's team from the six nations tournament along with Scotland and Italy thereby creating a 2-tier event with England, Ireland and France in a "top" division. A divisive proposal in more ways than one. Thankfully they came to their senses and the motion was defeated on the 10th April 2013. But how was this even an option? Can you ever imagine the removal of the Scottish, Welsh or Italian mens' teams from their respective tournament, even if they were continually losing? In fact the Scottish and Italian men regularly end up fighting for the wooden spoon yet no proposal has been ever been made to removing them.

A brief history of the tournament: The 6 nations competition for women began in 1996 as a 4 nation tournament for England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. France and Spain joined in 1999 and 2000 respectively. However in 2007 RBS took over the tournament and substituted Italy for Spain to bring it in line with the men's tournament. Whilst I am sure the increase in sponsorship was very welcome and did a lot of good for the chosen teams, it was more than a little ruthless to discard Spain like that. They were certainly collateral damage. And bringing it in line with the men's tournament does still make men the default.

Following this year's tournament where Scotland lost two games 76-0, they and the Welsh Rugby Union put forward a proposal to split the tournament. Whilst I appreciate that it must be soul-destroying to lose by that much, regularly and in fact have not won a match since 2010, why is the reaction to this to cut the funding and sponsorship for the team by splitting the tournament? Surely a more logical approach would be to support one of your national teams to greater effect. Unless of course, they were disposable.

Well from the WRU's annual report from last year it does in fact appear that the Women's national team is indeed disposable. From page 9 of the report:

0. Elite Rugby includes our funding, staffing and support of the national team, the national age grade teams, the sevens team, the national academy, the regional academies and a £6.2m sum to the four Regions for international player release, in addition to £1.2m to the semi-professional Premiership Clubs.

I would like to think that the national team refers to the women's team but that would be a folly. In a 104 page document the word "women" is mentioned 11 times; there are two photographs of the women's team, one playing and about 2 1/2 pages including photos devoted to the women's game. Although it is only an Annual Report it is yet another example the eradication of women in daily discourse. In this instance men is really the default. In fact the women's team is always referred to in the report and in media as the Women's National Team. The men's team has no reference to their sex.

It is laughable really that anyone would actually think that "the national team" refers to the women given the amount of spending on the two national teams. Men's Team: millions; Women's Team:10's of thousands. And of course the amount of media coverage both teams get is pretty much incomparable as is the pay. The Welsh women's team is self-funded and not allowed personal sponsorship. No pay and no leave entitlement. Absolutely disgraceful. They also have no development squad, no U19s or U20s either. This proposal could have decimated women's rugby in Wales. The fact is, that any further support and finances that could be devoted to women's rugby would be seen as a detraction from men's rugby. And let's face it, that's what is important here.

So how did a proposition to remove the Welsh team from the 6 nations even gain any ground. Well if we look at the Scottish RFU Board and the Welsh RFU Board we can see they are all men. Every one of them. No representation of women at all. Is it unsurprising that women are disposable, their voices eradicated? I did find a woman, Julie Paterson on the Welsh RFU Executive as the Director of Compliance. The irony of that job been given to a woman is not lost**. And there is a woman, Kath Vass on the Scottish RFU Council, representing Women's Rugby. There appears to be no direct representative at all from Women's Rugby on the Welsh boards.

But surely some reference/collaboration/consultation was made with those who manage and run the women's game or even some recourse made to the players. Apparently not. How divisive is that? Not unsurprisingly the players themselves felt unimportant and dispensable. And despite vocal opposition from players and other teams the proposal was still viable until a couple of days before the meeting, when Roger Lewis, the WRU Chief Executive finally came out and said he would oppose it.

From a more structural and societal aspect this is another example of men believing that they can tell women what they should be doing and making judgements on women's sport (generally subjective ones). Within sport there seems this constant reference to men's sport and not treating women's sport as an entity in its own right. Constant references to competitiveness, training workloads, skills all in comparison to the default of men. Women's sport is not allowed to grow by itself, is not allowed to be given similar credence, proportional spending or in fact any kind of equality unless men say so. That is not equality, it is benevolence and pretty sexist benevolence at that. As a woman I don't want my equality being decided on the whims of men. I want women to decide it and women to structure it so the world is more suited to women (in this case the world of sport) rather than us having to fit in with the existing world that is structured for men. Men: Hands off our sport!

*A lovely and fitting term co-opted from TheRealSGM.

** That is in no way meant to be derogatory towards Julie Paterson and her work. It is just a reference to the word "compliance" and how women are trained and stereotyped into being compliant from an early age.

Retribution or Justice?

Part of my feminist discovery journey has been to question my previous steadfastly held beliefs and look at them through a feminist lens in the context that we live in a patriarchy. One of these closely held beliefs is the abolition of the death penalty. All the usual reasons apply:

I couldn't kill someone, why should I expect others to do it for me?

It could be a mistake.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Civilised society shouldn't be killing people.

The distastefulness of an eye for an eye type mentality i.e. lowering ourselves to the criminal's level.

The inhumanity and torture of keeping someone locked up only until it is time to kill them (and them knowing that).

In my lofty, privileged position I also felt that I had to make this decision for myself before anything awful happened to my family or someone I loved as obviously raw emotions would kick in then and death to the perpetrators may look very appealing. And that would be seen as revenge, which, of course is very wrong. We are also told that raw emotions are never a good foundation on which to base a decision.

And then we come to the horrific rape and murder of Jyoti in Delhi, India. The perpetrators of this crime are facing the death penalty if found guilty. Immediately I felt my conditioning kick in. My first thought was who are we to execute these men, no matter what they did?

This thread on Mumsnet, however, prompted me to have a rethink about where these beliefs are coming from. On the thread, a couple of people were quite vociferous in stating that we couldn't be feminists if we didn't think these men should have the death penalty. Now there are only a handful of reasons why I think a person can't be a feminist and opposing the death penalty isn't one of them. But it did get me thinking as to why I almost unthinkingly accept that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances and whether that was a feminist stance or an anti-feminist stance in the wake of extreme violence against women.

I did realise quite early on in reading the thread that I just don't care what happens to these men. Not at all. Which was uncomfortable. I would prefer it if they could just slink away and die without me having to think about it emotionally or critically, but that won't happen, so here we are. How real are my convictions about capital punishment and how much is social construction? Well I'll probably never know the answer to that. But I do wonder whether the resistance to capital punishment is gendered. Women are socially constructed to be less violent so it would make sense that we would oppose other forms of violence more than men. Which then led to the thought that is this a trick of the patriarchy to keep us submissive. Engender in us this hatred of violence so that we won't use it against men. Could violence against men in particular circumstances be exactly what is required to gain freedom from oppression? If women were to start killing their rapists and abusers would that actually stem and even stop male violence? And if it did then capital punishment would seem to be more like justice, not revenge.

Then I think, am I being hypocritical rethinking this subject in light of the monstrous attack on Jyoti? Is it the nature of the attack that makes me have less care about the fate of the perpetrators? I mean it was so brutal and as a fellow woman I am frightened to the core by how much pain and suffering this woman went through. Would I feel this way about a brutal murder of a man? Possibly not, although I was highly disturbed when the BBC aired the depiction of the murder of a man in very similar circumstances. But the investigation into a similar crime on a man would not be scattered with victim-blaming and man-hating (instead of the misogyny seen in this case).

I know I would feel the same about a similar crime committed against children though. So, are crimes against women & children special? Yes, I think they are. Children for obvious reasons - their size, age, vulnerability and general innocence. Women because we are still oppressed and it is male violence keeping us oppressed. The oppression keeps happening and people, more specifically men, seem unwilling to do anything about it. And not only that we get blamed for the crimes against us. That feeling of impotence is rage inducing.

Would my feelings be different if violence against women were actually dealt with properly on any level? Very probably. If I felt justice was being served to women who were being raped and murdered; if I felt that we were winning the war against male violence then yes I would care about being humane towards the perpetrators of this terrible crime. But justice isn't being served and we aren't winning the war at the moment. These men thought that Jyoti didn't matter, that nobody would make them be responsible for their actions because they see women being treated appallingly everywhere and nobody does anything about it. That is why they felt it was OK to do this, in plain view. They thought they would get away with it. Surely justice in this case would be to send out a message to deter other men from casually raping and murdering women. Draw the line in the sand. Except of course it isn't a line in the sand. Because there are so many fronts to fight on. And is capital punishment even a deterrent?

I really don't know what my conclusions are on this. I know you can still be a feminist and not believe in the death penalty even for crimes against women. In fact I find that whole argument quite bizarre. And it certainly isn't my place to say who is or isn't a feminist (unless they are actively anti-feminist and then I reserve judgment!). Somehow, I would feel happier if Jyoti had survived, tracked her torturers down and killed them single-handedly. That would seem much more like justice and probably send out a much stronger signal. But it isn't about whether I feel happier and of course Jyoti can't do that. Part of me, a significant part, just doesn't think that the way to handle violence is with state-condoned violence, especially when that state is a patriarchy. It is just more patriarchal, bullshit violence. Whether that is the conditioning kicking in or something else does it even matter? Part of me, though, a small part, would like those men who did this to her and all those other men who torture and kill women and children to die. I can live with being a hypocrite on this.

I started writing this ages ago but it seems appropriate to publish it today in honour of International Women's Day and for the Million Women Rise march, today in London. So this is for all the women fighting the fight against male violence in a peaceful manner.

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Are we really having this same argument again?

So it is Wimbledon fortnight 2012 (yes that is 2012) and five years after women finally received equal pay in grand slam tournaments some people (Gilles Simon) are still arguing the toss about this. “Equal Pay for Unequal Work”, the cry from the detractors, superficially could be, a convincing cry. However, along with that is much misogyny and the definite implication that women are inferior.

First of all it isn’t pay that we are talking about, it is prizes. It is perfectly normal and reasonable for men and women to receive the same prize within sport. Take the Olympic Games for example, all winners (and runners up) receive the same prize, no matter what their sport or their event. But the argument against paying equal prize money centres on the fact that women only play best of 3 sets in Grand Slams and men play best of 5. So women are only doing 3/5th of the work of men so should only get 3/5th of the pay of men.

Well let’s take that logic to its conclusion. Athletics is a good example. A marathon runner therefore should be paid how much more than a 100m runner? 10s compared with 7500secs (2:05 hrs - men’s marathon world record). So marathon runners should receive about 750 times the amount of 100m sprinters? Really? No, because of course that would be ridiculous. They all work hard in their own event, no matter how long it lasts. And that hard work is rewarded with the same prize. The hard work is also recognised as not starting and finishing on the competitive field. The misogyny is in the implication that female tennis players don't work as hard as men.  Well that is an age old argument outside sport as well as within it and worthy of a blog  post by itself.  Suffice to say, its veracity is not held in solid foundations.

Whilst still on the 3 sets vs 5 set argument, within Grand Slams women aren’t allowed to play 5 sets. It isn’t because they can’t or because they won’t, but because they aren’t allowed – like recalcitrant children. They obviously need to prove their worth to the men in charge.  And of course timetables would need to be altered and that is obviously too much of a logistical obstacle. More misogyny. It is of course male privilege that allows men to play 5-sets. If women were considered equal to men then it would be bizarre that men and women didn't have the same competition parameters. Yet here we are and tennis is by no means the only culprit within sport.

Most tennis tournaments for men and women are only best of 3 sets and most tournaments are single-sex. As a result women already get paid a lot less than men on tour because the prize money is related to the revenue the tournaments can get. Women’s tournaments are less supported. More misogyny, under the guise of women’s sport just not being good enough or not interesting enough or too shrieky or whatever is flavour of the day. The whole revenue argument is skewed in favour of men anyway, because men are revered for their sporting talent, women not so much. Men have had a monopoly on sport for so long, women are just breaking into it.

Then, of course there is the quality argument. As we all know women’s tennis just doesn’t compare to men’s tennis. The standard is infinitely lower and there is no strength in depth. In fact, why don’t they all just quit now? Well first of all quality and standards are pretty subjective. Then, who gets to be arbiter of whether women have reached a sufficient standard that they are now equal. If, indeed, that mythical standard could ever be achieved (because after all women just aren’t men). At this point it is important to note that there are many more barriers for women than men in entering sport. There is societal pressure and gender stereotyping, lack of media attention, lack of funding and encouragement and also the legacy of women being banned from certain sports and events (some of which is still in evidence today) which means women are behind the men in terms of numbers and probably strength in depth. However, women’s tennis is probably on a par with men’s tennis say 30 years ago, yet men weren’t being denied their rewards for their labour then. More misogyny.

However, this is constantly comparing women to men which seems pretty pointless as they don’t play against each other. It also sets men as the default, as usual. If tennis was a women-only sport then the emphasis on quality of play would be in comparison to previous years/decades. And if you look back over the decades then there has been huge improvement in women’s tennis.

Even accepting that women's tennis may not be as competitive as men's tennis, why does this matter? The women involved are still doing the training, still putting in the effort to win. In fact, why would a discrepancy in prize money be the best way of increasing the quality and player base?  Maybe giving equal pay, increasing revenue, better coaching, participation initiatives and further encouragement of women within sport might be a better way of going about it. Penalising women financially, isn't going to be an incentive to increasing competitiveness, if that is of course the goal.  If the goal is to put women back in their box then financially penalising them is entirely the right way of going about it.

Male tennis players have not had to forfeit any privilege, power or revenue in order for women to be paid equal amounts (Wimbledon prize money since 1968). So they have given up nothing yet they still argue against it. They really just don’t think women are equal or deserving. And of course they want the final word as to when the female tennis players are worthy. Really, this could on for decades. Any excuse to justify why women should not be paid as much as men. It's all a bit chilling.